Considering how promoter Oscar De La Hoya and Tito Ortiz were boasting of buys over 200,000 leading up to the show, this number must be disappointing. It must be especially disappointing for Liddell and Ortiz who were to receive a cut of pay-per-view revenue as payment for the fight.

Early predictions from us at MMATorch were as low as 10,000 buys. It is difficult to handicap an event from a new promotion with no television using fighters who have not been on pay-per-view in several years. Earlier pay-per-view efforts from non-UFC promotions saw around 100,000 buys, namely Affliction: Banned in 2008 which came at a time when MMA was peaking in popularity and UFC was doing consistently strong numbers on pay-per-view, even for low level shows. Bellator’s two pay-per-view events had the benefit of television promotion on Spike TV. Liddell vs. Ortiz 3 didn’t have any significant television presence and low level UFC shows aren’t doing anything close to what they were doing ten years ago.

The current low-mark for a modern UFC pay-per-view is the reported 85,000 buys for UFC 224 headlined by Amanda Nunes and Raquel Pennington this past May. This speaks to the power of UFC’s brand appeal and television exposure as even UFC’s worst offering of modern times was able to triple the Liddell-Ortiz number.